| Product: |
Careful (DVD) |
| Date: |
12/03/03 (70 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: I get to go to a party tomorrow.
Disadvantages: It's a fancy dress party. I don't know what to go as.
One hundred opinions! I've reached my century at last. Nice. I take my helmet off and raise my cricket bat to acknowledge the enthusiastic applause from the stands. The Australian bowlers are looking flustered. How are they going to get rid of this tenacious, skilful and frankly good-looking batsman? They're not. The best they can hope for is rain.
Anyway, before I stretch an already tenuous metaphor to breaking point I'll get on with the review, shall I? Careful is a 1992 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. I'd never heard of him before, but will certainly make an effort to hunt down some of his other work - this is one of the most unusual and striking films I've seen for a very long time. (Of the films I've seen recently only Visitor Q by Takashi Miike had a similar effect on me, but for very different reasons.)
Careful is set in a small Alpine village, Tolzbad. I don't know if the time period is ever really specified, but the precis at the top of the page says it's turn of the century, and that'll do. The danger of avalanches is ever present in the village, forcing everyone to be extremely 'careful' about making any noise at all in case they condemn themselves to an icy death. The rituals of the village (like gagging all the babies so they can't cry) are described in a prologue. Against this peculiar backdrop a complex story of tainted love and familial dysfunction plays out.
Zenaida, a pretty widow, has three sons, all seemingly in their late teens. Johann and Grigorss are training to be butlers, hoping to get employment in the castle of Count Knotkers, the head of the village. The third son, Franz, sits in the attic, ignored by his own mother, watching events in the village through a telescope, unable to join in, unable even to speak. Franz is visited by the ghost of his father, who lost his eyes in freak accidents and fell off a mountain.
Johann is courting Klara (although Gr
igorss loves her too). Klara is jealous of her sister, who has a very close, probably too close, relationship with their father. She agrees to marry Johann. But that night Johann has an erotic dream about his own mother and awakes in great confusion, thoughts of his bride-to-be erased by considerably dirtier thoughts about his mother. (Ah hell, we've all been there, right guys? right guys? guys? um...)
In addition to all this, Count Knotkers is an old flame of Zenaida. He never married, but now his own elderly mother has died he begins to pay court to Zenaida, a move that proves unpopular with Grigorss. Events spiral out of control, with tragedy heaped on tragedy as the narrative moves towards its dark conclusion.
Sounds a bit heavy, doesn't it? Well it isn't. It's very funny, for one thing, although it's difficult to pinpoint any actual jokes. More funny-peculiar than funny-ha-ha, perhaps, although I did laugh heartily plenty of times. Although the story is a very overwrought melodramatic tragedy it's not really treated as such by the director. The characters and situations are too weird and over-the-top to be taken seriously, so when horrid things happen to them it's entertaining rather than nasty.
None of which even begins to explain why I liked this film so much. The real clincher is the way it's shot, and directed, and acted. It's a very effective pastiche of silent film styles and visual effects (appropriate enough for a story in which the importance of silence is paramount). Specifically it pastiches silent German Expressionist cinema, with its weird camera angles and odd decor. Apparently films about alpine adventures and mountains and stuff were popular in Germany in the 20s and 30s, so I guess it's referring to them too. It also reminds me of the German version of Baron Munchhausen from 1943 - it has a similarly dreamlike feel.
There is dialogue and sound, although the film also us
es silent-movie-style intertitles at various points. The colouring of the film is all resolutely unrealistic, using what looks suspiciously like proper silent movie tinting and colouring effects in places, along with weird camera filters that often almost blur out the action behind gaudy pastel mist. The colouring lends the whole thing a strange, otherwordly element (rather like watching colourised silent films, although there aren't many of those left). The set designs are deliberately artificial-looking, hearkening back to a time when directors didn't feel the need to strive for realism. It looks like it was all filmed in a studio, and some of the special effects look a bit cheap (a very obviously fake mountain goat falling to its death, for instance), although that's not really a disadvantage as it's well in keeping with the tone of the film.
The performances are equally eccentric. The actors (none of whom I've ever heard of or seen anywhere else) give very good imitations of silent screen acting - all their actions and facial expressions ever so slightly exaggerated. The costumes and hairstyles are entirely appropriate, and the makeup is great, giving the characters an over-the-top rosy-cheeked vitality that goes completely against the subject matter and makes it all the more entertaining.
I don't know how well Careful will come across to people who don't know much about silent cinema. (In fact I wonder how much my own enthusiasm for it comes from the fact that it's a direct pastiche of something I know quite a lot about. It's perhaps a bit too clever-clever, and maybe some of my enjoyment came from the knowledge that I 'got it'. Probably not - I think it's an entertaining film regardless of how much you know about old films - but I'm not completely certain. Did that make sense?) Regardless of all the references to long-dead styles of film-making, though, if you like your films slow-paced, un
realistic and self-consciously weird then you'll enjoy Careful. If that's not your cup of tea then the film probably won't be either.
Summary:
|
|
